Sanctification

Östersund, Sweden gave rise to Sanctification during summer 2001, when ex-Divine Desecration musicians Mathias Mohlin on vocals and Tomas Elofsson on guitar joined forces with Nils Fjellström, whose résumé already included Chastisement and Dark Funeral. Bassist Jürgen Bylander, previously of Defaced Creation, came aboard in 2002, followed by guitarist Markus Edvardsson of Souldrainer and Chastisement. Commitments to those concurrent projects diverted substantial attention from Sanctification, accounting for the six-year interval separating the 2003 debut album Misanthropic Salvation from the 2009 release Black Reign. By the time of the latter, Kristoffer Hell had taken over lead vocals, only to be succeeded shortly afterward by Magnus “Masse” Broberg, known from Dark Funeral and Hypocrisy. Session drumming duties fell to Tony Westermark after a short-lived rumor that Tony Laureano, veteran of numerous extreme-metal outfits, might fill the role. Throughout these personnel shifts, the band’s sound remained the sole unchanging element: an ultra-brutal strain of death metal modeled on Deicide, Krisiun, and Aeon, the last of which shared multiple members with Sanctification across the years, and devoted entirely to conveying anti-Christian themes in every conceivable form.